He set down the tongs. "Hey! Food's ready. Grab a plate."
When everyone had settled, lawn chairs, back steps, the patch of grass Lucia and Marco had claimed, Garrett reached for my hand.
“Before we eat,” he said. “Sloane and I have something to tell you.”
The yard went quiet. Everyone looked at us.
"I'm pregnant," I said.
Silence.
Then the yard erupted.
Maya grabbed me. Brian let out a whoop that made Sofia burst into tears. Shane pounded Garrett on the back.
Rodriguez crossed the yard and pulled Garrett into a hug that said everything words couldn't.
"You're going to be a good father." Rodriguez's voice was gruff. "Better than you think."
"I'm going to try," Garrett said quietly.
"That's all any of us can do."
Shane raised his glass. "To the newest member of the Engine 295 family."
"Hear, hear," Brian said.
They drank. The kids resumed their chaos. Garrett's arm came around me, and I leaned into his side.
Our family filling the space with noise and light and life.
The next morning, Garrett drove us to Queens.
He didn't say where we were going. He didn't have to.
I knew the moment he turned onto the familiar street, past the bodega on the corner, the laundromat with the broken sign, and pulled up beside the community garden.
The tree was still small. A young dogwood, barely taller than me, planted in the memorial section between a rosebush and a wrought-iron bench.
We'd put it in the ground six months ago. Garrett digging the hole himself. My hands over his on the base of the trunk as we settled it into the earth.
No plaque. No name. Just the tree, and what it meant to us.
Garrett spread a blanket on the grass beside it. I sat down, and he settled behind me, his back against the bench, my back against his chest. His arms came around me.
Sunday morning. Early enough that we had it to ourselves. Just birdsong and the distant hum of the city and the rustle of leaves above us.
I thought about the three couples who'd started as strangers and become family.
Shane and Maya, who'd taught each other that love wasn't about being perfect, it was about showing up imperfect and choosing each other anyway. Shane, who'd come to me desperate, not to fix his reputation but to prove to Maya that the man she'd fallen for was real. Write the truth, he'd said. That's all I'm asking. So I had. And Shane had spent every day since earning the life he'd never believed he deserved.
Brian and Ava, who'd proven that strength wasn't carrying everything alone, it was letting someone carry you when you couldn't stand. Four years of loving each other across a balcony before either of them was brave enough to close the distance. Now they had Sofia. And a love so quiet and steady it felt like bedrock.
And us. Garrett and me. The ones who'd had it all and lost it. Who'd spent eight years apart, building lives that looked right from the outside and ached from within. Who'd been handed a second chance and almost wasted it on pride and fear and the stubborn belief that we'd hurt each other too badly to try again.
But we did try. Through fire and grief and the silence we'd finally learned to break.
Three love stories. Three fires survived. Not just the ones that burned buildings, but the ones that burned through every wall we'd built to protect ourselves.
